There are three basic tasks you are asked to perform with animals in the Wild! scenarios. You will have to have a certain number of animals of a certain breed in your park, release a certain number of a certain breed, or make a specific profit off of a certain breed. The first is the easiest, as you can always buy more animals and just let them make a bunch of babies; this task often requires patience when money is tight and the only way to get more animals is to let nature take its course, but I wouldn't say that this task is difficult by any means.

Releasing animals into the wild can be difficult because of the many factors at play. As the annoying popup will undoubtedly tell you, only 95%+ healthy adults can be released, so babies and less-than-awesome animals will have to wait this one out. Because of this, using breeding to get your numbers high enough for the release quota can be a painstakingly slow process, unless they mature in a couple of months, which is rarely the case. Scenarios in which you are expected to perform this task make you purchase "rescued" animals, which means your work is cut out for you. I would not say that this task is too hard, but if you don't follow each animal's requirements (see each species' write-up above) and don't take pay attention to the health of the animals, you'll never get through this task. Patience and knowledge are required for this task.

Making a profit from a certain species is possibly the most annoying task, because you often start with no animals and are forced to dip into the negative just to create a stock of animals from which you can make a profit later. Animals who are well cared for will increase in value tremendously over a short period of time, but often the profit you're required to get increases with each level of difficulty in the scenario, so you have to make sure you don't sell all your animals and come shy of the final profit required, forcing you to start over. It's always a good idea to look ahead to the tasks you'll be asked to perform throughout a scenario in any case, and this is no different. While you can sell animals of any age or health, as opposed to the rules for releasing them, your profits will be much greater for the healthiest animals. As proportional to their purchase prices, babies always get more on the market but will often get you more viewing gallery revenue, so sell with care.

General Advice: many of the conditions you must meet with your animals can be satisfied "at any time", which means you can make your highest required profit off of horses in the first month of your park, sell them all, and disregard horses for the rest of the scenario. Once you move on to the later difficulty levels, those conditions will have already been met because of your business savvy in the first part of the scenario. Because not all animals or situations are profitable in a park, be sure to take care with how much you incorporate the "zoo" aspect into your park. If you need to have a high number of guests to viewing galleries, you may not want to have a bunch of very popular rollercoasters with long queues, as your peeps will all be held up in line rather than adding to your gallery totals.

It is important to know how to go about completing a task and then meet those conditions without screwing yourself over for other scenario requirements. If you need to pay back a loan later, don't max yourself out just to get the "number of gorillas in park" problem taken care of. Exercise patience and care, and everything will work out just dandy.

Mixing Species

You can mix different types of animals in the same enclosure as long as they are inside the right fence and have enough housing of the appropriate type for all species. Some animals are fine with other species sharing with them (apes tend to do well with this, not surprisingly) and others get very upset in any mixing situation. Each species' preferences in this area are not currently listed in this FAQ because that requires a lot of work, but I may add them later. At this point, use your judgment and watch the social stats of all animals in any mixed environment, and you'll be fine.

What Happens When ... ?

As I stated above, when peeps get caught in enclosures, nothing will happen. However, if you stick a zebra in the lion enclosure, chaos ensues. Any prey animal will be hunted within a few seconds and reduced to a pile of meat to be eaten by the animals involved in the kill. It costs money (the value of the animal) and is fairly mean, but it does increase peep interest in the carnivore enclosure. I wouldn't recommend doing this for any real reason, but if you just want to see what happens, you won't get yelled at by the game for doing it, you'll just be short one animal.

You are not allowed to release wild animals into the park without an enclosure, however, which makes me a bit sad. If you try to delete the fence of an enclosure that has animals in it, you will be thwarted by the game. I suppose it is a good thing that the amount of chaos you can cause with these animals is minimal.

Does It Matter If I ... ?

Each species' data includes its home habitat and the environment it comes from. However, this seems to be for our knowledge rather than any practical use. The animals don't care what ground or scenery you use in their enclosures. You could put polar bears in a desert and they'd be just fine. The only scenery items that matter are trees. Animals will sometimes look for something against which to scratch, and if there are no trees for this purpose, they will scratch against the fence, which will break it down faster. Any tree seems to fit the bill here, including cacti (ow!). You are free to add other scenery in the enclosure, but remember that any scenery objects, water, or steep grades in hills will create less space for yours animals to walk around in their own enclosures. While I like using some scenery and even putting water for animals that would normally spend some time in water (hippos, anyone?), it's important to remember that everything you put in must be considered for space for the animals. If scenery seems to dominate the enclosure, it's probably way too much and you need to delete some of it or make the enclosure much bigger.

Roads And Attractions In Enclosures

While you can't build walking paths through enclosures, you can make certain transport rides go through them. This presents a great opportunity for "safari" type rides, though one must be careful not to make them too lengthy, else peeps will become frustrated and wish to exit the ride. I do not know if there are any safety issues concerning the more attack-prone animals, but I suspect that such problems would become apparent immediately, so if you plan to have a ride go through a tiger pen, just watch the first round of cars and if no one dies, then you're fine.